User:Gbatheo/Graphics Programming (Real Time)

Introduction
Real time shader programming is becoming a more and more important part of the computer industry. Computer games sell in their millions so a lot of time and money is invested by games companies to develop and improve both hardware and software.

Languages Used In This Course
This course uses HLSL (High Level Shader Language) to show how an idea may be implemented in code. You don't need to know how to program in HLSL to understand this course as it is mainly to do with the concepts behind the shading

Prerequisites

 * High School Level Maths (Particularly algebra, trigonometry and vectors)
 * Any C Based Language (HLSL and OpenGL are both used to write real time shader programs and are based on C, so if you want to apply the ideas in this course then it's manditory to learn them)

Software
A good IDE to use is Nvidia's FX Composer

or for a simpler, less cluttered but less powerful environment AMD's RenderMonkey

Both of these are out of date for the more modern aspects of shading, with FX Composer only supporting up to DirectX 10 and RenderMonkey only DirectX 9. However, they are sufficient for all that will be covered in this course.

For DirectX 11 there is a plugin to the IDE Microsoft's Visual Studio By Nvidia called Parallel Nsight. However, the full version of Visual Studio costs money, but the express editions are free.